In Japan, the word “anime” is the word for animation. This should come as no surprise because it comes from the word “animation”, however, that word and even it’s Japanese friendly adaptation “animesheon” is so difficult for Japanese speakers to say, that the word was shortened to just the easy part “anime”.
The Cartoon Fantasy Organization, better known by its initials C/FO, was the first Japanese Animation appreciation club in the USA. The C/FO appreciated all types of animation and was in many ways, the birth place for Furry Fandom, Anime Fandom, and Giant-Fighting-Robot (Toho) Fandom in the USA. Although Furries today do not see much relationship to the Toho Fandom, it is almost impossible to do anything Furry and not find Japanese influences.
From the 60s through the late 80s and in some cases through to the early 90s, US distributors of Japanese Animation and some fans referred to it as “Japanamation”. Somewhere along the line, US Japanese Animation fans started talking to Japanese fans of Japanese Animation and picked up the word “anime”. The word anime, being shorter than either the previous descriptors, had an unmistakable cultural identity when spoken in the US allowing fans to jump into conversation by quickly asking “Do you watch anime?” over the cumbersome “Are you a fan of Japanese Animation?”
In 2017, and apparently for a few years now, there has been some confusion to what “anime” actually refers. Some people define anime as “anything with a good story”. This statement speaks volumes about the lack of quality in American animated entertainment. An interesting technicality arises when referring to anime, which is that many anime despite the fact that they are written in Japanese, are animated in other countries. Of course, this is the same for almost all of American Animation as well, especially Disney where even a single series such as Tail Spin would have different episodes animated different countries, such as Canada, France, Japan, and probably a few others.
This factor might make people ask how it is possible to define anything in animation with this multi-national factor added to the mix, however, it is very simple to define one from the other, when you look at the culture. Japanese Animation is obviously written for Japanese culture and American Animation is written for American culture. The writers of Japanese Animation are Japanese and the writers of American Animation are American. Sometimes, there is some intense cross cultural enthusiasm. The best example of Japanese Animation trying to emulate the American Culture is Gun Smith Cats where the animators sent a team to the US to research US made guns, cars, and interaction between real people. Felidae is a fascinating example where the author was born in Turkey, emigrated to Germany, wrote the book and film based on 1920-1940s American Noir books, and just to prove his enthusiasm, had the film recorded in English before dubbing it in German. In the US, Kubo and the Two Strings makes an excellent attempt at being a Japanese story by the use of Japanese folklore. However, in the end, each gives away its nation of origin because of cultural subtleties.
You might be asking yourself with all of this cross cultural enthusiasm, is it even necessary or beneficial to distinguish one type of animation from another? Well~ let me ask you: do you like Chinese food? Do you like Italian food? How about Indian, German, or Irish? Do you like Rock music? Do you like Folk music? Punk? Polka? New Wave? Just as there are genres of music, food, art, and books – Japanese Animation, anime, is a classification, a genre, of animation. The purpose of labeling these genres is not to say that one is exclusively superior to any other, but like food or music, an individual may be in the mood for a certain cultural genre of animation, and that is why it is so important for people who regularly talk about animation to know what is and is not anime.
